title: Hospital costs: can they be cut?
abstract: Major surgery is often proposed for "malignant hypertrophy of national health budgets." But before proceeding with such radical intervention, we need a better understanding of the "disease." Neither the United States nor Canada has a method to determine the right percentage of GNP to spend in the health area; no index of productivity or need is available. Yet an understanding of the mechanisms of growth of health budgets will permit our using strategies to reduce the rate of health spending.
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health; D002017:Budgets; D002170:Canada; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D004469:Economics, Hospital / Q000639:trends*; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000639:trends; D007250:Inflation, Economic; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science / Q000191:economics; D014481:United States